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Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks Quotes

Journalist

Geraldine Brooks is an Australian journalist known for her in-depth investigative reporting and unique narrative style. She has over 30 years of experience in the news industry, having worked as a journalist and editor for The Sydney Morning Herald, among other news organizations.

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Famous Geraldine Brooks Quotes

“Write what you know. Every guide for the aspiring author advises this. Because I live in a long-settled rural place, I know certain things. I know the feel of a newborn lamb's damp, tight-curled fleece and the sharp sound a well-bucket chain makes as it scrapes on stone. But more than these material things, I know the feelings that flourish in small communities. And I know other kinds of emotional truths that I believe apply across the centuries.”

“It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy.”

Writing Humans May Country Past Imagine Human Nature Empathy Shoes Passports

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.”

Writing Mind Doe Past Force Violence Modern Empathy Capacity Hatred Fundamentals Driving Modern Society Driving Force

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Writing is like bricklaying; you put down one word after another. Sometimes the wall goes up straight and true and sometimes it doesn't and you have to push it down and start again, but you don't stop; it's your trade.”

Writing Sometimes Wall Down And Trade One Word Bricklaying

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I was a news reporter for 16 years, seven of them a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps the most useful equipment I acquired in that time is a lack of preciousness about the act of writing. A reporter must write. There must be a story. The 'mot juste' unarriving? Tell that to your desk.”

Writing Years Stories Middle News Seven East Middle East Desks Reporters Equipment Balkans East Africa

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.”

Writing I Can Sometimes Pages Crap

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“Because I worked as a newspaper reporter for about 14 years before attempting my first novel, I learned to write under almost any circumstances- by candle light, in longhand, in African villages where there was no power, under shelling in Kurdistan.”

Writing Years Firsts Light Novel Circumstances Newspapers Village Candle Reporters Attempting Newspaper Reporters Candle Lights

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“When I write a word in English, a simple one, such as, say, 'chief,' I have unwittingly ushered a querulous horde into the room. The Roman legionary is there, shaking his 'cap,' or head, and Al Cap is there, slouching in his signature working man's headgear.”

Men Writing Simple Rooms Chiefs Shaking Caps Signatures Horde Working Man

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“When you're writing non-fiction, you go as far as you can go, and then ethically you have to stop. You can't go. You can't suppose. You can't imagine. And I think there's something in human nature that wants to finish the story.”

Thinking Want Writing Humans Stories Fiction Imagine Human Nature Non Fiction

Author:Geraldine Brooks

“While I love to read contemporary fiction, I'm not drawn to writing it. Perhaps it's because the former journalist in me is too inhibited by the press of reality; when I think about writing of my own time I always think about nonfiction narratives. Or perhaps it's just that I find the present too confounding.”

Thinking Writing Reality My Own Fiction Presses Contemporary Former Narrative Journalist Nonfiction Contemporary Fiction Love To Read Confounding

Author:Geraldine Brooks

About the Author

Born: September 14, 1955
Died: June 19, 1977
Known for: Journalist
Quotes: 103

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